Poor management, benefits, and overall culture
Pros
It's a health system, so it shares with all care delivery organizations the basic mission of providing healthcare to people who need it. Some parts of the company have smart, kind, dedicated employees, though it's hit or miss.
Cons
I am just summarizing my top 3 cons because an exhaustive list would be too long. 1. Benefits include 1 day of paid maternity leave for full-time corporate employees (not sure the policy about other types of employees; I know some clinicians get the same crappy policy but some senior people seem to get paid leave -- typical Sinai bifurcation of saving good comp & ben for "senior people"). This is the worst parental leave policy I have ever heard of at a healthcare company, and during my time at MSHS lots of women I worked with left for companies that actually offer paid parental leave. Also, the disability leave policy (i.e., if you get sick with anything else) is not at all generous compared to anywhere else I have worked, and dealing with central HR if you actually have to use it is a nightmare (they are unresponsive, unhelpful, send you jargony slide decks, and keep redirecting you to their third-party claims administrator which is also stuck in the stone age). The 403b employer match takes THREE years to vest (and there is no match in year 1 of employment). Even other health systems aren't this stingy toward their employees! 2. Internal corporate functions really do not work well. Interacting with Payroll is like dealing with airport TSA (incompetent, unreasonable policies, power trips, they seem like they are really trying to make your & your vendors' life difficult). Nothing is as bad as Payroll but IT is similarly difficult - they will close your IT tickets without ever getting in touch with you about your IT issue, laptops constantly malfunction/break and it takes forever to get any help in the way of fixing or replacing, etc. And HR seems like they are actually trying to help but they are severely understaffed. People managers at MSHS are screwed - there's no help with recruitment, and even once you've identified your own candidates, hiring processes will literally take months to get them in the door. And there is no semblance of modern-day HR like support with developing people managers, managing complex people issues, performance management, etc. From witnessing this I don't really understand how the overall company continues to function. It is understandable that good, talented people churn relatively quickly. 3. Management is a real disappointment. It is a very top-down culture where "leaders" (if they deserved that title) make decisions with very limited input from employees. At the top level, C-suite internal politics and power struggles trickle down and impact everyone, and it really does not seem like the C-suite actually cares about running a good company or taking care of employees (just look at recent interviews published online with the new system President). For the rest of the company, there is no systematic investment in or norms around recruiting for or developing good people managers -- in fact, company norms incentivize bad management. In my observations, at Sinai you are most likely increase your power/title/compensation by sucking up to those above you, being a yes-(wo)man, and being cutthroat. The company's incentives leave nothing to gain from treating your team or colleagues well. Of course, there are good people who do treat others well, but it's not systematic and those leaders tend to be fighting an upward battle to do right by their colleagues. And then, exhausted, they leave.
